Apple Intelligence might get a paid tier one day

Apple Intelligence — Apple's name for a set of artificial intelligence features on its devices — might not always be completely free.

In the latest installment of his Power On newsletter, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says Apple is looking into making money from Apple Intelligence down the road.

Apple Intelligence, or AI for short, was announced in June 2024, during the company's annual WWDC event. It will launch as a free set of features on Apple products including iPhones, iPads, and Macs, with some of the announced features becoming available as beta when iOS 18 launches in September. The new options include AI-generated images called Genmoji, a smarter Siri, and a feature called Rewrite that suggests edits for your writing, among others.

According to Gurman, however, Apple needs new revenue streams, especially as it's getting increasingly hard to innovate on hardware devices such as the iPhone. One of these could be a paid tier for AI called, perhaps, "Apple Intelligence+" which would enable additional features to subscribers. Apple could also get a cut of the subscription revenue generated from AI partners.

This probably won't happen overnight; Gurman doesn't have a precise timeline, but he does say the implementation will "take time," and that Apple could be making money from AI "in a few years."